


A Change In Plan

by Ark



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: M/M, Sex, Slash, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-07
Updated: 2012-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-04 23:25:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,245
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark/pseuds/Ark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were supposed to go away and take Elena with them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Change In Plan

They were going to go away together.

In the end, after everything, after the year of drama and death and terror and blood, in the end, it could end so simply. Klaus would leave and take Elena, and Stefan would go with them. 

No one else would be hurt, no one else had to die, and even the evil thing that had taken over Alaric Saltzman wouldn't bother them. The thing that was Alaric knew his life to be bound to Elena's, and there was no one more interested in the world in preserving that life's blood than Klaus. Stefan himself was a pretty damned close runner-up. The thing that was Alaric couldn't have hired a better honor-guard to protect Elena's longevity if he tried.

Elena would be safe and comfortable. They'd show her the world. She was ready for it. It would be good for her to leave Mystic Falls, in the end. She'd be sad at first, and her friends would grieve, but in the end it would be good for them too. 

With Elena would go the blood of the Doppelganger, and all the attendant attraction that had for unsavory things that went bump in the night. With Elena gone, perhaps the town could return to, if not a semblance of normalcy, than at least a place where death didn't visit every week. The kids could go back to school and hold non-tragic dances and graduate and move somewhere else.

Damon would be upset to lose them both a while, but Damon was smart, and Damon knew there was no one so invested in chaperoning Elena than Stefan and Klaus. Damon had enough on his hands, taking point in the fight against the thing that was once Alaric Saltzman. 

Elena being gone would be its own relief; there'd be no chance of her being seized by “Alaric” for his own sense of security, and two of Damon's primary distractions and weakest spots in his armor would be removed from the picture. Then he could focus entirely on stopping or slowing down the monster that held the form of the man he had loved. 

Really, Stefan was getting the better end of the deal.

Damon was consumed with it, consumed with the project of containing the unkillable creature with Alaric's face. Stefan had found him pouring over books on the Originals and old spell-craft, looking for answers, Damon's bright eyes wet. 

Stefan knew how guilty Damon felt about the situation, which added to his misery and brooding and pacing. It was bad enough to have to do battle with a monster that wasn't his lover but had his memories, held them in contempt. Now Damon had to try and finish him, again.

He knew that Damon blamed himself for not being able to kill Alaric at his end, for not giving him a clean death, a last completed neck-snap between them, just the two of them. Then Alaric would be properly dead, like he'd wanted, like he'd chosen. Instead Damon had left when he knew full well Alaric's heart still beat fitfully, sluggishly, unable to witness his final breath. He'd left him vulnerable to Bonnie and the witches, and this immortal hunter thing had happened, and now Damon meant to fix it.

Stefan trusted his brother to find an answer, and Damon would trust him to safeguard himself and Elena. Others would say it was crazy when they left with Klaus, would call Stefan a kidnapper and question his sanity, but Damon knew. Damon knew Stefan like the back of his hand, and also not at all, the way siblings knew each other. 

“Klaus and I...go way back,” Stefan had told him once, lifetimes ago, and Damon's perfectly sculpted dark eyebrow had shot up, and he'd smirked a little, and dropped the brow, and that was that.

Damon said nothing the times when Stefan left the house in the middle of the night and came back unblemished but worn to a shadow, and Damon said nothing the times he encountered Niklaus Mikaelsen going in or out of rooms in the boarding house. 

He'd taken the tack that anything that kept Stefan from binging and killing was better than not. Stefan tried not to think about how often Alaric had been with Damon in days past, and how happy they had looked, and how he'd envied their ease.

Not so long ago, a few weeks, maybe, Klaus had made a similar proposal to the one at hand, but then Stefan wasn't in a position to agree. He was still reeling inwardly, coming down off blood, every moment of every day trench warfare, seeking and taking whatever other form of distractions he could get. 

Klaus had indulged him for hours, which he was good at, letting Stefan tear into him so that he didn't rip anyone else apart. Stefan fucked him on the big four-poster bed until he couldn't see or think or do anything except rut. He and Klaus were extremely good at that. 

Afterward they lay in sated heat and afterward was always different. Klaus would go loose against him, passion and tension drained, all relaxed sweat-shiny limbs, round blue eyes and friction-tousled curls. That night he had an arm around Stefan's shoulder, the fingers of one hand buried deep in Stefan's hair. 

“We should go away again, mate,” he'd said, low in the dark with lips against Stefan's neck, and when Stefan's spine drew tight Klaus said, “It'll be different than before. Went about it the wrong way last time, didn't we. We'll do it properly. This time we'll bring your lady-love along with us and make a merry band of it. We'll look for werewolves who want to live forever while driving the fastest cars and staying in the finest hotels in Europe. Do you think Elena would prefer starting in Milan, for the fashion, or Florence, for the art, or Rome, for the pizza?”

And Stefan had lain naked and fucked-out and needing blood like he needed his next breath, but it was also a glorious fleeting image to behold if he closed his eyes: the three of them strolling through tiny cobbled streets in old medieval cities, he and Klaus in tailored suits worth a small fortune, Elena gliding in impossible heels made for her in France, a large fashionable hat tipped sideways as she drank in the crème de la crème of world culture. 

Maybe at some point Caroline would decide to join as Klaus predicted and desired, as did Stefan, if he thought about it, as would Elena, and the four of them would be a force unseen since Byron and Percy and Mary Shelley and Claire Clairmont holed up at a lakehouse in Switzerland to tell ghost stories. 

But Stefan had said, when he'd had his next breath, “You're crazy. Elena will never agree to go, and they'd never let her go here. Let's be glad we're all not trying to kill each other anymore, and enjoy a little peace.”

He'd rolled over, resettled heavily onto Klaus's hard body. Klaus had looked up at Stefan and said, “Keep it in mind, is all, love. You know it's the only smart way out of this,” but Stefan had bent to kiss him hard, to block out images and needs beyond this, their proximity on the bed, and he'd pushed Klaus's willing thighs apart and hooked his legs up over Stefan's shoulders and taken him before Klaus could speak again. When Klaus spoke again his pupils were big and black with lust and he only said Stefan's name.

Then the exchange today, with Klaus truly adamant about leaving, and everything different now. Elena's home life and last chance of normalcy was ruined, and seeing Alaric in his monstrous state affected her nearly as much as Damon. Better now for everyone if they were gone. Jeremy would return to Colorado, where he'd been happy. The rest of them would forget in time. Could be made to forget, even.

So it was easy for Stefan to agree, today, to tell Klaus, so easily, “I'll go with you.” And he would. They'd both get what they wanted, and they would go. 

They would collect Elena and take her far from this place of dread and loss, and he would be with them both. Keep them both balanced, while they balanced Stefan. Maybe it had always meant to be like this. Maybe Klaus had been right all along. 

All that day after the house-siege resolution Klaus had been amenable, sharing sipping glances with Stefan, full of their plan. They tried, they all tried, to give Alaric another end, to freeze and dry him in time. 

The pitched battle went poorly, and that hurt, that fucking hurt, more than any pain, because it had been the one chance to finish this for the better. For Stefan. For Damon. For once. Even for Klaus.

Klaus had kept his word, had fought as hard as any of them, harder even, had reached in and grabbed hold of Alaric's heart but could not keep his grip.

Alaric desiccated was the plan, would have been beautiful had it worked. They would have kept him bound in chains and locked up in the cellar, where Damon would no doubt have set up a small shrine and spent the next few decades or centuries searching for a cure, if such a thing could be cured. But he wouldn't have left the boarding house or town for a long time. Would have stayed anchored to Alaric, knowing somewhere inside the drained shell of a body lurked the imprint of a consciousness that had loved him above anything else.

But the thing that was Alaric now was stronger than any of them, than any of them had imagined. The combined force of the brothers Salvatore and Klaus Mikaelsen was not to be trifled with, and yet Stefan's ex-history teacher had cast them aside and broken them like unwanted toys. 

Gasping on the floor, Stefan had watched the relish with which the hunter snapped Damon's neck – almost lovingly, he thought, spitting blood, watching his brother fall. Something in the thing that was Alaric reaching through time to return Damon's own callous neck-snapping, or perhaps to remind Damon of the last neck he hadn't snapped. Memories twisted like vertebrae.

Before they had gone into the school, Klaus had slipped close in line with Stefan's step. “Bags are being packed,” he murmured. “I chose Venice, for the boats.” Stefan tilted his head in a nod, and if Damon heard he didn't hear because he was thinking about Alaric. 

Somewhere out in the treeline Bonnie and Jeremy were readying for dark magic and death, and somewhere in the school Elena and Caroline needed them badly, and an evil force with the aspect of a man Stefan had admired and come to see as another brother was bent on killing them all. His life had never seemed more fucked or more promising dependent on the outcome of moments, so he smiled just a little, for Klaus, before they went inside. What the hell.

Then everything had been fucked to hell and back again. 

Then Klaus had decided to pack his bags, and Elena into blood bags, and everything got worse. Stefan hadn't thought it could get worse, but he should have known better by now never to give into that trap. They were supposed to go away together, but Klaus hadn't been able to wait. 

Stefan asked himself why as he and Damon went to do what they did best, save Elena. In saving Elena they were unmatched; the thing that was Alaric was right about that. 

It appeared that they screwed up every other plan and undertaking, however, and though Damon didn't know the extreme extent of how much this was fucked up for Stefan, Damon was smart, and Damon could guess. 

Damon kept Stefan's gaze when he sought it, and nodded reassurance, and when they reached Mikaelsen mansion his hand cuffed Stefan's shoulder, like he had when they were children. Stefan was the one to pull open the door. He'd long been invited in.

After everything. After everything, Klaus hadn't been able to pass a single evening without some villainy, hadn't been able to fight his own worse nature for the reward that was so close at hand. After all the shit they'd been through in histories past and present, and all of their run-around, messed-up months of late. Moving back and closer to the friends and bed-partners they wanted to be more than enemies, that they were so much better a being. 

After all of it he'd picked the absolute worst of choices, targeting Elena, the only unforgivable act. From this there could be no coming back from. No uneasy allegiances and bizarro Scooby Gangs again.

Why, when they were so near to a new beginning? Stefan asked himself many questions, tried to put himself in the confused motivations that composed Klaus, that was Nik also, a gentler sort of soul, all of Klaus's better parts. 

From the point of pure self-preservation it made coolly logical sense: he needed as much of Elena's blood as possible, but her life had been judged and outweighed by the pressing threat of Alaric, Original vampire slayer. 

Faced with the prospect of making less hybrids – the interest seemed to have waned as late anyway – and staying alive along with a good portion of the vampire population, the sacrifice of Elena made sense. One girl for countless lives, human and hybrid and vampire. And she was nothing to Klaus, really, but a blood bank, had never been more than that – a blood bank, and Stefan's baggage. 

This was Stefan's fault as much as anyone's, more than anyone's. He and Damon sped through marbled halls toward the heavy rich rank scent of Elena's essence in too many bags. He could smell it everywhere through thin plastic. Elena, wan and weak, nearly bloodless, was sprawled on the floor, but Stefan could hardly look longer than to see that she still breathed. 

Klaus and Tyler were locked in a furious snarling match of wills and blows. Damon looked once at him and Stefan nodded, and Stefan breathed, and they moved forward as a team together. 

Damon seized Klaus's arm, and Tyler, shocked and grateful for the sudden respite, caught on quick and grabbed the other, wrenching it back.

Then it was Stefan's turn. He was glad it was him. It had to be him.

Maybe that's why it worked. Maybe if it had been Damon who tried to reach into Alaric's chest at the school, the spell would have worked. The connection had to be deep, blood-deep, to the bone. You had to mean it. Klaus had been simple to shake free, but Damon would have kept a grip on Alaric's heart until Bonnie was done, Stefan thought.

No one else but him to do this. He wished, before he did it, that they were alone.

Klaus looked at him, held, and Stefan held his blue eyes like he had done many times before, and he pushed his fingers in through Klaus's ribcage and found his heart. Stefan squeezed, and did not let go.

He fought but did not fight the way he could have done. Once Stefan had him and Klaus understood what it meant there was only the way he stared, the way he watched Stefan with his eyes open all the way through it. 

He was so still that Damon moved away to check on Elena, and Tyler was an absent supporting weight behind them, and all they were was Stefan's hold on Klaus's heart, and the way Klaus's heartbeat filled his ears. His heart was beating so fast.

Still Stefan held on. One hand was buried in Klaus's chest, the other clapped heavily on his shoulder, near his neck. There he gripped tightly too. 

It seemed to take forever, with Klaus nonverbal and all of them watching, but at last Stefan could feel magic building like electricity on his spine, knew that Bonnie had done her part, that Jeremy had, so he dug his fingers deeper into Klaus's flesh and did not look away while he did it.

In the 1920s their gallivanting affair had left an impression neither could escape, even after all these years. Then had come Klaus's reign of terror, and their murderous freakshow of a road trip, and the toying with humanity, and the stealing of family members, and then against all odds after that a kind of peace. 

All of them should have learned by now that the better times and parts of people didn't last, but they kept tricking themselves.

On one of the nights where it had been Stefan to make his way to the Mikaelsen manor, he'd slipped naked into bed to find Klaus naked and waiting for him, and they laughed under downy blankets until they made even better noises. “How did you know I was coming?” he'd asked, after he had, panting under Klaus, and Klaus had said, “Aside from casting a penny into my wishing-well?” and he'd grinned but his eyes had been more serious when he'd said, “I always know, Stefan. I can hear you from a mile away, your heartbeat, exactly,”

which meant that Klaus knew that they were coming for him tonight, heard Stefan's approach, that he'd kept still nearly on purpose while Stefan's hand sought and found his center.

It was almost over. Klaus's pulsing heart and heartbeat in his clenched fist, slowing. Klaus's eyes unwavering. They've said too much already. There was a sort of pleading there, and shocked betrayal, and courageous acceptance, and terrible hate, and something else, something steady, that made Klaus stand through it and not fight him, with Stefan's hand locked onto his shoulder. 

We were supposed to go away, thought Stefan, and he tightened his other hand, hot and deep in blood and magic.

Even as Nik started to go colder and then grayer neither of them looked away. Stefan thought he maybe may have nodded, maybe may have understood, or maybe he was glad Stefan had been the one to do it, not Tyler or Damon, or maybe he wasn't. 

Klaus's eyes on Stefan seemed to say _I chose Venice for the boats,_ and then his heart stopped under Stefan's fingertips. 

Stefan felt it stop but still Klaus's eyes did not stop staring, did not break away, even as he fell gray and veined and frozen in time to the floor. Stefan heard himself say something to make them leave while Klaus watched on. Damon took Elena home, and Tyler trailed after, dazzled, freed. Finally they were alone.

He crouched down beside the lank body. He drew Klaus closer. His head was on Stefan's knee, a pose they had often taken before. There was nothing more to stare at but Stefan's streaky face, so after a while he closed the dulled blue eyes.

This was a time Damon had not had with Alaric. This was a time Stefan would not envy anyone on earth. He pulled Klaus in closer by the shoulder, and smoothed a hand through his hair, dry and blond and curled, and kept vigil. And before anyone came back, he let himself keen, for what they hadn't been.

Stefan stayed sitting like that for a long while with Klaus, until his big brother arrived to drive them all to the ocean.

  



End file.
